WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batman #107 by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, and Tomeu Morey, on sale now.
With all of the madness that usually fills their streets, Gotham City has never been considered one of comics’ most pleasant locales. Apart from their usual crime and corruption, the home of the Dark Knight Detective has spent the last few years bombarded by assault after assault from some of Batman’s most dangerous foes. With everything they’ve been through recently, the Scarecrow is back to send the citizens of Gotham over the edge, and the latest issue of Batman shows that he may not even need trademark toxin to make it happen.
Picking up immediately after the events of the last issue, Batman #107 opens with the people of Gotham reacting to a chilling threat left in the mayor’s own home: a single scarecrow. Recognizing this as a threat from Jonathan Crane—presumed dead since the A-Day attack—Gotham all but spirals into chaos.
While its media speculates on what this could mean and whether or not the city would even be able to withstand another supervillain assault after everything that’s happened recently with Bane and the Joker, Gotham residents are looting grocery stores and stocking up on gas masks in anticipation of a fear gas attack. But as Batman investigates the crime scene inside the mayor’s home, he makes an unexpected discovery. With no traces of toxins or fear gas to be found, it’s simply an ordinary scarecrow. As a professor of psychology, Crane knows how to stoke the fears of others with nothing but a wooden post and burlap.
Bruce himself acknowledges how clever the message is, reflecting on how the tensions in the city are high enough that all it takes to ignite a panic is a single straw man. Later, in the Clock Tower with Oracle, Batman predicts this won’t be the last time Crane leaves a simple scarecrow to prove a point, expecting that his old foe wants to see whether or not he can really break Gotham without the use of his chemicals.
With such massive trauma inflicted back to back, it’s no wonder the people of Gotham are more on edge than usual. They’ve had years to get used to the sort of madness that the Batman combats, but even the residents of Gotham have their breaking point. First, the man who broke the Bat brought Gotham to its knees during the “City of Bane” story arc by Tom King, Mikel Janin, and others.
Just as the city was starting to rebuild and reignite its hope after Bane’s conquest, the Jester of Genocide snuffed out any chance they had at normalcy with the events of “Joker War” by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, and Tomeu Morey. On top of that, after the horrifying events of A-Day, as depicted by Tynion, Jimenez, and Morey in Infinite Frontier #0, the citizens of Gotham have finally had enough.
With hardline leaders like Gotham’s Mayor Nakano just as fed up by Gotham’s masks as its citizens are, it’s no wonder that something as radical as the Magistrate program and their Peacekeepers as seen in the "Future State" timeline would be adopted. If Batman is no longer enough to fight back the tide of chaos, it’s only a matter of time before the city turns to other protectors, sacrificing their freedoms to rid themselves of their fear. More than most, Batman knows that the only thing there is to fear is fear itself, and with the Scarecrow plotting his next big move, Gotham City is going to get a firsthand lesson.